Croatian Locodels is Bringing Smart Delivery Service to Vienna

Locodels is sharing economy based city delivery service. We focus on the same day, door to door, city delivery service solving the last mile gap for e-commerce and retailers. Our sweet spot B2B customers are small companies that need daily delivery services of up to 10 packages, but it is not a limit. We offer them a price that is 20% below the market level, just as they would get from classic delivery companies for the count of 20 or higher daily deliveries.

Our couriers are regular people with some spare time (if you are student or retired, you’re also welcome to join), taxi or Uber drivers, couriers from existing classic delivery companies.

Couriers are paid 70% of the classic delivery price and 80% of the express and super express delivery price.

Image credit: total-croatia-news

On each pickup you’ll see courier’s name, license plate number, photos, and contact phone. Courier feedback counts, too. Senders and/or recipients reported to be giving false details or violating our terms of service may lose access to the system.

We offer three payment models to our customers: classic credit card payment, prepaid option and postpaid option. Classic credit card payments are used for one-by-one delivery payments. With prepaid model our customers deposit certain amount that depends on the city itself. That model is mostly used by companies where CEO or CFO hold the credit card and administration guys have access to our system. Postpaid option (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) is reserved for the biggest clients found in retail area.

You are a serial entrepreneur who successfully exited the information
technology company, IT4U, in 2010. What inspired you to found Locodels,
a company providing shipping service?

Ten years ago I was developing software for few regional clients in logistics and distribution services. The biggest one was Slovenian Viator Vektor, making almost $500m in revenue. Unfortunatelly, they’ve collapsed and all I was left from them was a big experience. In May 2015 I was part of IVLP from State Department (International Visitors Leadership Program), spending 3 weeks in the USA, having 80 meetings in Washington, DC, Kansas City, MO, Salt Lake City, UT and San Francisco, CA. During that time I’ve use Uber a lot and saw a great opportunity to use that business model in delivery services. When I got back, I’ve founded Locodels. Locodels is not a shipping company, we are an IT company providing a solution that connects senders and couriers.

Where is the Locodels service currently available?

We’ve opened two cities in our region, Zagreb, Croatia and Ljubljana, Slovenia.

When did/will you officially enter the Austrian market? What are your
expectations in comparison with the other locations where Locodels
operates?

We’re entering Vienna market in April 2016. Purpose of opening Vienna is to gather knowledge about expansion in the city where we are “not home”. That will show us how and what to do in the next cities.

How is the company handling international expansion? What are the new
challenges that Locodels might be facing? What makes Locodels different
from its competitors?

Every city is different market with different set of rules. We percieve each as a new city starting from scratch. The only thing that speeds up the process is experience and established metrics.

What is your strategy for geographical expansion? Will the Locodels
service be available at other Balkan countries any time soon?

Our target are cities that are big enough to provide larger number of drivers and SMEs that need same day, door to door delivery service. As for now, we don’t plan to be present in cities that have population less than 500k people (except for Ljubljana).

What are the latest achievements of the company you feel most proud of?

Deliveries done by Locodels couriers are insured by Allianz.

What are the next milestones?

Next steps are securing the Vienna market and further expansion accross the EU.